Review RPG Codex Review: Expeditions: Conquistador

[Avonaeon]

You're welcome to buy us a license for UE4 or CryEngine.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I could point you to some free engines, but they all require learning C++

 

[Jack Dandy]

Hmmm... Wonder how Wasteland 2 will end up.

I wonder what other teams can do when trying to make a big RPG with Unity.

 

[villain of the story]

Ah yes, finally, the patch finally came out for GOG version and it's much better now. Thank you.

I know that it's easy to use. But so far every game I've seen on Unity looks the same. They all produce blurry graphics and have performance problems.

I think besides ease of use it's a very poor choice.

Blurry grapics? Sure it isn't your GPU?

I suspect neither Obsidian or InXile would pick the engine for their 2D games if graphics being blurry was "a thing" with Unity. And on the contrary, I've seen very crisp visuals in some Unity games, Conquistador included.

I think Unity's biggest issue stems from the fact that it's a big package that comes with a lot of stuff that could be well cut out for far better performance if you have no need for them. I've always felt like they were shooting themselves in the foot by not giving the source (unless you could convince them) and not going for a more systematically modular system. Hopefully, it will keep floating without becoming a bloatware.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Wasteland 2 should be ok. The Kerbal Space Program guys talked to Unity directly about various memory issues, etc and in the new build performance problems are mostly gone. A difference like day and night. It still crashes like mad though, but that may be for other reasons.

I guess Unity can be optimized like any other engine, but it happens on low level stuff that many people just ignore.

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

So, in summary does this game have stupid hard-coded 6 v 6 battles that they were talking about?

Don't want to waste time reading if that's what it is

 

[EG]

Combat is relatively fun -- particularly if you're ambushed by thieves. It gets repetitive later on, though. Slash with melee, shoot with gun, heal until dead /combat.

Random illness makes having more than one doctor worth-while.

Trees like to obscure one's vision on the exploration map, even with the Colored Rays of Locating; it makes rotating the camera necessary, as VotS suggested. A more top-down view probably would have eliminated the awkward line of sight given by the camera.

Trees also can obscure your men or the enemy, necessitating spinning the camera about, again. Similar effect in town, when NPCs are eclipsed by buildings.

Seem to be having trouble gaining experience, though -- I took a more "explore the entire continent" approach, rather than "follow quest-lines" one. It's probably my fault.

The dialog and random events are very good, though. It makes suffering these defects worthwhile.

I just wish there were some way to skip the tutorial in the beginning as, though it is very quick, it still annoys me on a restart.

 

[Monocause]

Just finished Hispaniola, and I must say that I lost heart for the game. I was hoping that Mexico will open new character development options, new resources to manage or generally unlock some new mechanics to play with, but after an hour it seems just like more of the same.

I'd say it's a very good first effort, but it lacks in longevity. I have most of my party at veteran rank and two sergeants, but I still don't have a reason to switch between characters for battles, except when an occasional injury or random illness strikes.

If the character development system would be more robust it'd be much more interesting - make a bigger pool of skills to choose (also give a choice between a number of active skills instead of forcing pre-set ones!) and rethink the passives you can pick. Most of the passives seem pretty useless, and I noticed that I ended up picking pretty much the same skillset for every character regardless of the class.

Hunters, and ranged classes in general, need a rethinking. Scholars are a nifty idea as a "mage" class, but the battles usually aren't long enough for their skills to shine, and when their ranged CtH is 40% at best you start wishing that you took a scout or a soldier instead. Hunters need something interesting to back them up - aimed shot is useless for most battles as usually you end up facing the enemy pretty close. Quick shot's aim penalty is prohibitive - shooting at 50-60 percent chance often means you end up missing twice. Their damage output is also poor, especially when you use bows (which again, are pretty useless as most of the time you'll be shooting at close range).

In the end I had the feeling that an optimal party setup for *each* battle would be two scouts (good positioning, mobility and DPS), three soldiers (with their almighty stun and tanking skills) and one doctor to rush in and heal stuff. Other setups performed poorly in comparison.

One suggestion: raise ranged base CtH from 30% to 35% (or even 40%) and raise ranged damage by 5 points overall. Hunters and scholars will become more viable, as will be using the soldiers' ranged option - as it is know I don't bother shooting with them most of the time. Another: rethink how levelling works and introduce more customisation options - choices for active skills, more passives (especially one that would improve ranged CtH for non-hunter blokes). Allow the players to develop their party members into interesting hybrids or extreme specialists.

 

[tuluse]

A skill tree for the active skills was a stretch goal. They didn't have enough money to do it.

I think a better way to handle the ranged to hit percentage would be to increase it by 5% each time you invested enough equipment to get to the next level. That way high level units would have a decent to hit percentage, while low level units would still suck.

It may still throw off balancing because the human player is way better at prioritizing targets than the computer, so the stronger you make ranged units, the more it benefits the player.

 

[Hobbit Lord of Mordor_]

So is there a plot in this game or is it pure sandbox?

 

[Niektory]

There is a plot of course, a branching main quest and some side quests like in a normal RPG.

 

[Galdred]

Hunters, and ranged classes in general, need a rethinking. Scholars are a nifty idea as a "mage" class, but the battles usually aren't long enough for their skills to shine, and when their ranged CtH is 40% at best you start wishing that you took a scout or a soldier instead. Hunters need something interesting to back them up - aimed shot is useless for most battles as usually you end up facing the enemy pretty close. Quick shot's aim penalty is prohibitive - shooting at 50-60 percent chance often means you end up missing twice. Their damage output is also poor, especially when you use bows (which again, are pretty useless as most of the time you'll be shooting at close range).

In the end I had the feeling that an optimal party setup for *each* battle would be two scouts (good positioning, mobility and DPS), three soldiers (with their almighty stun and tanking skills) and one doctor to rush in and heal stuff. Other setups performed poorly in comparison.

I like 4 soldiers, 1 scout, and 1 medic too, so there is some variation in composition. :D The scout can reposition to give flanking to several soldiers, and with the chain stun, it gets pretty trivial to flank anyway.
Stun is a bit overpowered as it is not resistable, and battles usually turn into stun spam. It would be nice if the other classes were useful during some combats.
I agree about the lack of character development options : after Hispaniola, you are more or less at max efficiency, and have very little to look forward too.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, Hunters could definitely use a bit more accuracy. I had an idea to run my archer into melee between two weakened enemies and Quick Shot x2 + Point Blank shot. Sadly even facing an adjacent enemy Quick Shot still leaves hunters missing either one or both of the shots about 2/3rds of the time. I'd think that upping the base accuracy by 25% for ranged but greatly increase the range penalties per tile (3-4x maybe) would be a good idea. Something along those lines. Give bows less range penalties or more accuracy than guns, of course.

 

[Western]

Ranged characters work ok with barricades, I ran a hunter (rifle), trapper, amazon, medic and two soldiers.

With barricades, quick shot and walk up your shots, ranged characters can inflict some pain, maybe it's not optimal but it gave the game play some variety and only got more powerful when combined with lanterns.

 

[Average Manatee]

When the AI is on insane they are very good about dancing everyone they can into range, taking a shot at your weakest character, then backing off. When it's a 6v12 that puts you on the losing side of firepower, especially due to their intelligent focus fire which can and will snipe anything other than a soldier in a single hail of bullets. At least, I saw no way at all hunters could be useful in the fight I did vs Esteban and the rebels (granted the text seemed to imply that running headlong into battle wasn't the best choice). It's like XCom:EU, where on easy difficulties hiding behind half cover was a viable solution but on high difficulties the enemy firepower advantage meant that you were statistically guaranteed to lose soldiers constantly even hiding behind full cover simply because you faced overwhelming firepower.

Haven't found those special classes or gotten enough XP to start maxing characters though.

Scouts are really good at dancing in and out melee so they can deal high damage without being hit and without clogging up your frontage. That's all you want hunters for, getting as much damage as possible without getting caught in melee, but with their poor average damage output they just can't stand up. Enemies just close too fast for that narrow window of time where a scout can't attack but a hunter can to be useful (if it exists at all in some battles). If battles were bigger and you had something like 8 units at once I could see hunters being more useful since even scouts get movement limitations at some point, but not now.

Also low accuracy makes the interrupt command hilariously useless most of the time. You can have 5 soldiers readied with their muskets and a charging warrior right next to them has a decent shot of dodging all 5 interrupts. Higher accuracy would make them hit at least 1 or 2 shots most of the time, which would make closing in for melee less of a no-brainer for both sides.

 

[Average Manatee]

Completed the rebel assault where you hold out for 10 turns at night without even needing to use my doctor's revive skill. Feels good man.

 

[Tigranes]

I think rebalanced Hunters / Scholars, the active skills stretch goal and a few tweaks would have greatly increased the longevity of the game, but one can understand the resource limitations. It's a nice little game and a great first effort, but nothing memorable. I do hope they can release a proper expansion pack or a spin-off that expands on the assets. (e.g. imagine a band of mercs post-Crusade trying to find their way back to England, or something...)

 

[Average Manatee]

It's certainly still a good game. It's a tragedy though because with another 6 months or so of polish expanding the combat, text adventures, character development, etc it could have been excellent. Hopefully things are working out financially for the devs so they can do more.

 

[J_C]

How long is the 2 campaings (hispaniola, mexico). The review mentions 56 hours, it really is that long? Or I've just misunderstood something?

 

[Tigranes]

56 hours is a joke unless you're one of those super-slow-gamers. Took me ~25 hours and I'm a very fast player, though I assume most Codexians play pretty fast also.

Mexico is about twice as big as Hispaniola, but maybe not quite that big in content...

 

[Frian Bargo]

What about that other game, that is like this one but more fantasy oriented?

 

[Darth Roxor]

56 hours is a joke unless you're one of those super-slow-gamers. Took me ~25 hours and I'm a very fast player, though I assume most Codexians play pretty fast also.

Yup, I clocked exactly 20 hours myself and I did all there was to do.

I'm fairly sure the 56 hours meant 2 playthroughs, though.

 

[Average Manatee]

Mexico is about twice as big as Hispaniola, but maybe not quite that big in content...

You're also a roving band of badasses that can fuck up nearly anything in your path at that point, so it's a lot more compressed than when you are starting out and can barely survive off the land and have very few movement points.

 

[Crichton]

I think pretty much everything I want to say has been said before in one of the two big threads. My party has recently arrived in Mexico; everything's getting pretty same-y; it's a fun game for a while but needs more variety. I think the best place to add that variety would be in the tactical combat section. Possibilities:

-Give polearms (spear, halberd) the ability to attack one hex away instead of just adjacent hexes but make the defensive bonus for shields correspondingly larger.
-Restrict characters to one large weapon (sword, bow, firearm, halberd, etc) but make firearms universally more accurate to encourage non-hunters to take them.
-Require a scholar to be present on the battlefield to place traps.
-Make the doctor's healing less effective for minor wounds and give them more combat options to make them less one dimensional and hopefully make taking one and only one less automatic.
-Replace the silly "cooldowns" with an endurance bar with depletes upon: use of special attacks, regular attacks, movement, getting hit, etc but replenishes each round.
-Make bullets much more damaging but require a round to reload them to distinguish them from bows.
-Add a stealth skill for hunters which makes them invisible as long as they have at least partial cover from all enemies.

Good luck with the next game, Bitcomposer.

 

[Overboard]

Good luck with the next game, Bitcomposer.